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Today's data centers face the challenge of delivering higher service levels with less. Lowering total cost of ownership (TCO) means more than just reducing the costs of initially acquiring IT resources. The far greater portion of TCO includes ongoing maintenance and support costs, as well as the potentially huge costs of downtime.The Sun Fire[tm] High-End servers are designed to lower TCO by providing rock-solid availability, scalability with virtually no downtime, and flexible resource management.
Dynamic Reconfiguration & Dynamic System Domains
Two key technologies for enabling these mainframe-like computing characteristics are Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR) and Dynamic System Domains.
DR is the enabling technology behind Dynamic System Domains. With DR, the Sun Fire High-End servers help you to better keep applications up and running, while more cost-effectively managing IT resources.
- Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR) - Part of the Solaris[tm] 8 (02/02 or later) Operating Environment (OE), DR enables you to dynamically reconfigure, remove or install core system components into your server while the Solaris OE and your applications are running.
- Dynamic System Domains - Fault-isolated, flexible partitions that allow you to run multiple applications and multiple copies of the Solaris OE on a single server. For flexible resource management, Dynamic System Domains can be adapted to meet your changing application environment.
With DR, you can perform the following functions:
- Configure Uniboard CPU/Memory boards into a running domain
- Install new Uniboard CPU/Memory boards in a domain
- Hot-Swap Uniboard CPU/Memory boards
- Hot-Swap a PCI card
- Move a CPU/Memory board or MAX CPU board between Dynamic System Domains
- Initiate parallel DR operations
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Dynamic Reconfiguration Benefits
Technology That Sets the Sun Fire Servers Apart
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Continuous uptime |
- Add, replace and reconfigure key components while the server is running
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- Minimize maintenance windows (planned downtime)
- Reduce system service disruption and downtime (unplanned downtime)
- Simplifies serviceability
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Simplified resource management |
- Flexibly allocate system resources to meet changing workload needs
- Run multiple applications in fault-isolated Dynamic System Domains on a single server
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- Adapt system resources to respond to dynamic application environments
- Consolidate multiple applications on a single server
- Reduce administrative costs and overhead of running separate servers
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Flexibility of compute resources |
- Hot-swap Uniboard CPU/Memory boards and other components, common across the entire Sun Fire 3800-15K server family
- Provision hardware resources between servers
- Instantly redistribute capacity across domains
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- Utilize resources efficiently and flexibly
- Make "hot spares," instantly available from less mission-critical server platforms
- Optimize capacity even as your IT architectural needs change
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Scalability without downtime |
- Upgrade CPU/Memory Boards and other components "on the fly"
- Add and remove resources to address changing business requirements
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- Perform rolling upgrades without rebooting the system
- Change system capacity, change processor speeds, change PCI cards without a reboot
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Dynamic Reconfiguration for hsPCI Assemblies & MaxCPU Boards
For information about the latest released version of DR, see
Dynamic Reconfiguration for hsPCI Assemblies and MaxCPU Boards on
Sun Fire 15K/12K Servers.
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| IN THE SPOTLIGHT |
Press Release: Sun Enhances Workload Management To Bring Advanced
Mainframe-Class Capabilities To Midframe And High-End Sun Fire Server Lines
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